“Design Mindfulness is everything. It’s how you live in the world.” – Interview with Tom Peters

In a recent interview on leading the 21st-century organization with McKinsey Quarterly Tom Peters suggests to deal with the insane pace of change by going beyond the kinds of tasks and roles that can be automated. One of his recommendations for leading the 21st-century organization is design mindfulness:

“One way to deal with the insane pace of change is by living to get smarter and to learn new things. Another way is by going up the value-added chain beyond the kinds of tasks and roles that can be automated. Kleiner Perkins just hired the former president of the Rhode Island School of Design, John Maeda, as one of their general partners. His role is to introduce design thinking into each of the companies that Kleiner Perkins invests in, to get the design element into them. Machines can automate a lot of things, but design is something humans do best. It’s part of the way you play around with things—part of the relentless experimentation. You falter, you get back up, and eventually you figure things out. That’s the design process. “Design mindfulness” has got to be in everything you do—down to the littlest thing. Even the language you use in your e-mails. There’s a character to communications. There’s a character to business. It’s how you live in the world.”

You can read the full interview which made it to the Top Ten of articles on McKinsey Quarterly this year including some video excerpts here. The post made it to the Top Ten of articles on McKinsey Quarterly this year.

Sources: Article: McKinsey Quarterly; “Tom Peters on leading the 21st-century organization – Thirty years after leaving McKinsey, the prolific author returns to discuss tomorrow’s management challenges and the keys to organizational change and transformative leadership in any age.”, September 2014.